India is passing through her most critical - perhaps dangerous - times. World's largest Democracy, India has today become the largest cesspool of official corruption, crime, political opportunism and caste/communal animosities. Political Parties are now Family Corporates, Bureaucracy their franchisee and crony capitalists their partners as they embark upon plundering the Nation together. Time for India to wake up and restart! One Anna or Kejriwal is not enough - Karan Kharb

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Thursday, November 15, 2012

A SHIP ABOUT TO SINK

Pritish Nandy

(Courtsey: Times of India Blogs)

(Pritish Nandy, a Padma Sri laureate, is a renowned figure in Indian media, politics and public life. He is admired, respected and even feard for his sharp, pointed yet objective and pragmatic opinion on major national issues. His expression of concern, caution and anguish at the fast degenerating standards of Indian polity and failing governance should make every Indian sit up and take note before the ship wrecks and sinks).

I like Manmohan Singh. He has immaculate credentials. It’s these credentials
that have seen the UPA through its most stormy years. If Singh wasn’t Prime
Minister, the Government would have collapsed a long time back. No, not because
of its inherent coalition contradictions but because it’s simply not possible
for so many crooks with conflicting agendas to loot the country together,
almost as if in perfect unison. The Indian Political Philharmonic Orchestra
must be the world’s most amazing cacophony of rogues, rascals and robbers. Luckily
for the UPA, there was always Singh to fall back on. Most middle class Indians
refuse to be cynical. We know exactly what’s happening around us, we criticise
it constantly, but when it comes to the crunch we all rally around the nation
and the flag.

We are not bat-brained paranoids. Neither are we wide-eyed
innocents ready to buy into every ridiculous explanation thrown our way to
explain the loot that’s taking place in broad daylight. But the latest season
of scams has flummoxed all. This is not just Alibaba and his chaalis chors. Everyone
among the chaalis chors is another Alibaba with his own forty thieves. That’s
the way the pyramid of crime operates today. But because Singh, soft spoken and
self effacing, is the face of thisGovernment,
India has kept faith.But now, enough is enough. Neither Singh nor Pranab
Mukherjee, nor anyone else is capable any more of saving this Government. It’s
neck deep in its own sticky sleaze. What’s worse, you haven’t seen anything yet.
All these scams are but the tip of the iceberg. Talk to anyone and you will get
an instant dhobi list of scams in queue to break. No, I am not saying this.
Congress leaders are, in private.

Look at Singh, wan and waylost.
Or Mukherjee going apopleptic in faux anger because he has to defend what he
knows is indefensible. They look less convincing than Rakhi Sawant playing Joan
of Arc. The problem is: We have voted into power the stupidest bunch of
thieves. They are such losers that they can’t steal a hamburger without leaving
ketchup stains all over. Yet they are constantly trying to pull off the biggest
scams in history. From Rs 64 crore in Bofors, they have upped the ante to Rs
1,70,0000 crore in 2G and no, I am not including hundreds of aircraft Air India
bought while sinking into bankruptcy and preposterous sums spent on arms deals
that have made India the world’s second largest arms buyer when we can’t
provide food and healthcare to 60% Indians. Our leaders are making deals on the
sly with greedy builders, land sharks, illegal mining companies,
corporate fixers, shady arms dealers and, O yes, US diplomats who want to
manipulate our political choices. And, what’s more amazing, they do it like
bungling idiots. Even Inspector Clouseau can outwit them. But that doesn’t mean
they are not malevolent. These are people who are destroying India from within.
They are not just robbing you, me, and the exchequer. They are destroying institutions,
subverting laws, vandalising our heritage and history, and trying to build a
dazzling,
amoral edifice of crime and corruption unprecedented in the nation’s history.

It’s a scary scenario that could turn the land of the Mahatma into one gigantic
Gotham City with a flyover to hell. But my question is more basic: Can we trust
these idiots to run this great nation?

If you travel and meet people across India, you will realise that for every
scam that breaks—and currently there’s one breaking every week—there are ten
more waiting in line. The media has never had it so good! And it’s the same
gang whose names keep coming up. Kalmadi, Satish Sharma, Sant Chatwal, Ashok
Chavan. The NCP lot. The DMK. And everyone, in private, is protesting his own
innocence, pointing fingers at someone else. It’s a sure sign of a collapsing regime.
It’s what happened when Rajiv with a staggering majority in parliament lost his
mandate to govern. Rats alone don’t leap off a sinking ship. So do everyone
else. So even though Singh, like Pontius Pilate, may wash his hands off every
scam that hits the headlines, the fact is: The longer this Government stays,
the more compromised the Congress will be, and the less capable of coming back
to power.

You can’t allow the sovereignty of a nation to be compromised just to
win a confidence vote. You can’t bribe MPs to get your way in parliament. You
can’t allow a shady hotelier, with CBI cases against him, to play roving
diplomat and, worse, give him a Padma Bhushan for it. You can’t appoint a
tainted
bureaucrat as the nation’s CVC. You can’t file a FIR against a corrupt CM and
then allow him to melt away. You can’t let the prime witness to the nation’s
biggest scam, who offered to turn approver, be murdered in broad daylight and
pretend it’s a suicide. If this is the best this Government can do, it’s time
to step down.

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Welcome to People Power

People are the Nation. Let's do everything in our power to multiply and build up 'People Power'. We must force the Government to rid the system of corruption and callousness. The least we can do is to expose and humiliate the corrupt officials, self-serving politicians, Vadra-DLF or Gadkari type of business culture, and the divisive forces destroying public goodwill in the name of caste, religion and region.

Fortunately, all these evils are not too many. Nor are they too brave. Anna, Ramdev and Kejriwal have exposed how timidly and stupidly the corrupt react. All evil is concentrated in a few hands at the top from where the fountain of corruption flows downwards. This muck, therefore, cannot be cleaned up from bottom upwards. The clean up has to start from the top!